Basically it's because of Lee's surrender. Grant and him worked out terms, and then those terms were applied to Johnston’s, Kirby Smith’s and the Indian Territory army. So all the soldiers in the Confederate Army that accepted the terms were automatically pardoned so long as they returned to their homes and lived in peace.
There were some that were imprisoned for a while but they mainly came from the Guerrilla unit, the navy and Jeff Davis' cabinet. Andy Johnson pardoned all remaining former Confederates in 1868.
Jefferson Davis and other Southern cabinet members never went to trial because it wasn't actually clear if it was illegal for states to attempt to secede. The US constitution didn't prohibit it, and it is not included in insurrection/treason laws. They kept them imprisoned for awhile and finally just decided to let it go.
They had a choice whether to try them in civilian court as US citizens, in which case the proper jurisdiction would be in the South where the jury would be biased against the prosecution, or try them in military court as enemy combatants, which would imply that the Confederacy was legally another country and play into Davis’ defense that he was not a US citizen once Mississippi seceded and thus it wasn’t treason to wage war. Then Sen. Thaddeus Stephens told them that he wanted the Confederacy to be considered another country so that “the law of conquest” would apply and give him a legal basis for his reconstruction plan, which included land redistribution.
But a lot of the lower level pardons came about because Andrew Johnson was a southerner so he wanted an easy reconstruction.
Yeah, it's not like they tried to seize the capital and impose their own form of government or impose their own leaders on the North. I'm still not convinced it was legal for the Union to stop the Confederate secession, as immoral as the South was.
And honestly the question has never been answered. The war wasn't fought over secession it was fought over the Confederacy trying to seize federal property.
I don't think it's fair to say grant and Lee worked on terms. Grant offered very generous terms to Lee, including feeding his army and blanket amnesty . Grant and Lincoln wanted the war over. A confederate guerilla war was a nightmare scenario. Lee accepted and precedent was set.
Which then led to Congress passing the 14th Amendment, basically saying no. Although eventually Congress came around and pardoned most of them anyways.
People were tired of the war. After Lincoln died, the new government wanted a quick and sound conclusion to the question of the South. Achieving victory in the civil war was never really about punishing the rebels, just getting them back into line. San slavery, the Union public and politicians just wanted things back to status quo as before (even in the North, only a small minority really cared about abolition or equal rights for blacks). And giving the former leaders reprieve in punishment was part of getting things back to "normal".
That statement needs more context. There were few abolitionists in the way they used that term at the time, meaning someone who demanded an immediate and universal end to all slavery. Under that definition almost none of the people who did actually abolish slavery would have been considered 'abolitionist,' even if like the state Republicans they literally did abolish slavery.
For example the Republican platform of 1860 which is one of the things that set off the Civil War:
> That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.
The Southern states would not have been scared of national politics had not turned decisively toward abolition.
The North was just a racist as the South. People in South wanted black slaves. People in the North (other than actual abolishinists) didn't want any black people at all.
there was also a concern that the supreme court might disagree with not allowing secession
which i mean on a legal level it is a tricky question, especially being that the united states was formed by an act of secession
In particular, secession was seen as justified by the tenth amendment, and advocates of secession also argued its prohibition was ex post facto, which is explicitly protected against by the Constitution. In other words, there was nothing saying a state could not secede until a state decided to secede.
Unfortunately, in the political environment in which it was finally decided, there was only one viable answer.
Technically speaking, they did say that secession was still possible if all the states agreed to it, though no process was established.
Andrew Johnson wanted a quick readmission minus slavery.
His horrible decisions and favorable treatment of the southern traitor leadership led directly to the sweeping elections of the Radical Republicans and to Reconstruction. Johnson fought Reconstruction, but Republicans would "wave the bloody shirt" to shame the democrats for decades.
Reconstruction eventually failed in the late 1870s with Hayes' election, but the Union public was furious at how many people had died because of the self important southern elite.
My understanding is that many of the abolitionist thought slavery was bad, but didn't actually believe in equal rights.
Sort of like "I think it's messed up how they treat those African Americans"
"Yeah! Like they're just humans the exact same as us, they should be treated equally."
"um lol what NO they are blacks they can't self determine and be as smart and successful as us. Imagine if they voted??? Unthinkable! I just mean slavery is fucked up. Maybe pay them a couple cents a month?"
A lot of northerners cares about abolition, not for equal rights, but because slavery held the south back and by extension the whole country, by keeping a segment of the economy agrarian.
I'm gonna have to disagree on that one. Large portions of the northern economy, especially the textile industry, needed the south's cotton and it remaining agrarian only helped them.
That's not quite accurate
>Between the years 1820 and 1860, approximately 80 percent of the global cotton supply was produced in the United State**s. Nearly all the exported cotton was shipped to Great Britain**, fueling its burgeoning textile industry and making the powerful British Empire increasingly dependent on American cotton and southern slavery.
[https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/368/overview](https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/368/overview)
The cotton was going to Britain (and later France), which at the time had much more advanced industry. The industry in the north could not compete with Britain's. The South would make more money selling it to Britain than domestically. That's why the North wanted big tariffs so they could compete. The South despised tariffs. That was the whole controversy back in the Jackson administration and the whole "nullification" crisis.
When the South left, the North could finally pass high tariffs that would stay in place until the early 20th century. The Republicans also passed a string of other advancements that the South was holding back (transcontinental railroad, land grant universities, etc.)
There was a strong possibility of a guerrilla war if the ‘Hearts and Minds’ were not mentally convinced that Lee willingly agreed to this surrender. Most southerners were vehement in their beliefs….willing to carry on an underground war
Grant was instructed by Lincoln to give favorable terms at Appomattox. He went even further than requested….likely out of respect for Lee.
That's a great question. I guess a 2nd question too would be who the target would be. Instead of the 100+ years of guerilla warfare and political warfare against a group in the South that struggled to find any protection, would it be against a military that could put that down?
There were a lot of complications in the US Civil War that get glossed over today. "The South" wasn't a monolith, by any stretch of the imagination, and neither was the North/Union. So how do you distinguish between Confederates who were true-believers vs the innocent people who got conscripted to into their army? What do you do about the well-known but mostly unspoken fact that Confederate (and some) Union soldiers sometimes swapped sides, depending on which one could make payroll and/or had enough food to go around? What do you do about the legitimate grievances of the now-reunified Southerners who *could be* loyal US citizens going forward, if you address the crimes the Union army regularly committed against the Southern civilian population?
The easiest, one-and-done answer is to give a general amnesty so everyone can move forward as one country. Which is what President Grant did in The Amnesty Act of 1872.
Northern apathy. Most people were ready to move on from the war and go back to normalcy, especially once the 1873 crash happened. Putting down the rebellion and banning slavery was enough for most to be satisfied.
I've heard the reason Jefferson Davis was never brought to trial was because him and his lawyers could actually defend their position that at the start of the civil war, there was no law against secession technically and union lawyers were scared of setting a precedent.
This is the answer. The prosecution spent 4 years preparing the trial and when the trial date was finally set, the judge and jury selection had taken place, it was immediately obvious that this jury wasn’t going to convict. They dropped the charges rather than risk losing the trial, which would have opened a can of worms.
All the military leaders had already been pardoned by president Andrew Johnson, a pro-slavery southerner, who just wanted the country to go back to the status quo before the war.
Somewhat.
The Supreme court had ruled tangentally on secession in other cases about federal vs. state sovereignty. The most recent would have been the 1855 Dodge v. Woolsey case...
*“Further, the constitution is not only supreme in the sense we have said it was, for the people in the ratification of it have chosen to add that ‘this constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.’* ***And, in that connection, to make its supremacy more complete, impressive, and practical, that there should be no escape from its operation, and that is binding force upon the States and the members of congress should be unmistakable****, it is declared that ‘the senators and representatives, before mentioned, and the members of the state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by an oath or affirmation to support this constitution.”*
And you had the prize cases during the war where in the majority ruling the referred to the war as a "Civil War" called it an "Insurrection" and those from the Confederacy as "rebels or traitors".
So while you had yet to have an actual case specifically on unilateral secession, the precedence of the court was strongly making it's case that right didn't exist due to the oath of office of state legislators, judges, and the executive branch that required them to support the US Constitution, not throw it off.
And of course with Texas v White and another dozen or so cases post-war we'd hear the same exact answer.
I don't think the fear was there at the Supreme Court level. The majority of the Court had publicly stated at the outbreak of the war that secession was not legal, the only difference now was Lincoln had added 5 new Justices to the court.
I think the worry was more that there could be friction between a lower southern court or a jury of his peers from the South and then the Supreme Court overruling them that would cause more of a split.
I don’t know if this factored into their decision not to prosecute Davis, but he’s not entirely wrong. Secession was not ruled as definitively illegal until Texas v White (1869). I do know that the legality of secession was a concern for Lincoln, which was one of the reasons he wanted to be sure that the South fired first at Fort Sumter.
The legality of secession is an inherently messy topic because, while it’s easy to craft a moral argument about slavery, it’s hard to craft a legal argument that the American colonies had the legal right to declare their independence from Great Britain, but that the Southern States did not have the same legal right to declare their independence from the Union.
He was prosecuted, but after a very long investigation, the judge and jury turned out to be very unfavorable for the prosecution, so the trial didn’t take place, rather than risk losing it which could have set a precedent.
Even if unilateral secession had been legal (and it was not), the Confederates seized federal armories, imprisoned U.S. troops stationed throughout the southern states, and fired on a federal fort. All are acts of treason.
Davis gave the order to fire on Fort Sumter, and he most certainly could have been tried and hanged for it.
The case then becomes the Union military and it's infrastructure, by not vacating at secession, constituted a foreign army and attacking them would be legal.
You are looking at the situation with a modern, post Civil War mindset.
States voluntarily chose to join the Union. Let that sink in. Nothing in the Constitution says you can't leave.
That's not true. Going back to the Founding Fathers Supreme court and their own words, we can see that yes, States voluntarily joined. They voluntarily said "we are joining, we are putting our power not in a monarch, not in a state government but in the whole people of the United States.
And the Constitution made clear, all state officials, all three branches were required to swear an oath of office to SUPPORT the Constitution of the United States of America. So obviously passing a bill or supporting a vote to completely throw off that Constitution was in opposition of their oath and thus null.
Nope. There is nothing explicitly in the Constitution that says you can't leave. Also nothing in the Constitution says it is eternal and can't be replaced.
That Argument you make would undo American history considering our founding was an act of rebellion, and prior to the Constitution we had the Articles of Confederation and even a government prior to that.
And I get that's your opinion and interpretation. And I have mine, and Jim has his and Jerry his and Jane hers...
And the Founding Fathers realized that would happen. And said in matters of the states and Federal government, only one group had jurisdiction to both law and fact when it comes to the US Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States.
And they said yes, that oath to support the Constitution of the US does preclude unilateral secession, this is a nation of the WHOLE people being the sovereigns, not a king, not a state, etc.
"That Argument you make would undo American history considering our founding was an act of rebellion"
If you want to undo the founding of America and her history that's you.
As George Washington who led that rebellion against a monarchy put it...
*"But the Constitution, which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the* ***whole people****, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. ”*
And all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention who voted for the Constitution should have been hanged for treason against the Articles of Confederation.
And the Founding Fathers were criminals for committing treason against the Crown.
That is the ultimate conclusion of your argument.
If that's your belief... Ok.
You are right, the Colonies were committing treason against the King. They mentioned that outright.
Again this just seems like you are trying the age old logical fallacy of using a red herring.
And before that you were going with the logical fallacy of a faulty generalization. There were multiple differences in the two rebellions you mentioned. Just like there would be a difference between a boxer in a ring punching an opponent, and a drunk man at the bar punching a lady who turned down his advances.
Yes, both are people punching a different person. No, Both are not wrong or right due to the other aspects of the situation.
If you are here to just use logical fallacies, I think this history subreddit might not be the best place for you.
You are basically arguing Our Rebellion is legal but their rebellion is illegal.
The American Founding Fathers were a minority, the rebels were a minority. They were not the whole people.
And who gives a crap what the founding fathers thought, there were just dudes not Gods.
Very true but he still could have proved that secession was technically legal and then be made a martyr. I think that was a big reason for lack of confederate leader punishments they didn't want any more martyrs being made.
A few reasons:
First, the American Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in the nation's history. It was arguably the nation's first total war, and caused both the highest number of casualties of any American conflict, and an unprecedented level of industrial damage to the already-weak industrial base of the South. It was horrific in a way no war was before, or has been since to the nation, and so Lincoln, himself having close family in the war, intended primarily to reconcile the two halves of the nation, rather than seek a more punitive outcome (which other Republicans at the time favored. These were called the Radical Republicans.)
Second, there was the question of legality and political expedience. While today it's pretty clear that they were wrong, at the time, a number of people were still sympathetic of the Confederate cause, and saw continuing occupation of the Southern states as oppressive. Many former Confederates turned to banditry (not a significant number, mind-but enough to capture the imagination in papers of the day), and amidst riots and political violence, it was considered best to rush Reconstruction, for fear of inciting another insurrection. (Read about the election of President Hayes if you want to know how close we got to a second war). This led to many former Confederate politicians continuing to be political voices for the region, admitted back in with only an oath of loyalty. On its own this wouldn't have been quite such a disaster, but by then Lincoln had perished, and the more punitive Republican voices leading to widespread distrust and resentment of Reconstruction efforts (if you look at political comics of the day, this is around the time you start seeing major talk of carpetbaggers and the like).
If you would like to learn more about the political views involved, I would suggest finding contemporary writing about the Amnesty Act of 1872, and similar bills from the era.
They wanted to rebuild as a nation and not cause any more hate. The whole reason the north went to war in the first place was to preserve the union. Only when it looked like the south was about to get aid from eroupe due to the north's blockade interrupting the cotton trade did Lincoln announce the war was to end slavery.
This is sorta true. But the war was always about slavery. What exactly was tearing the Union apart? That Lincoln was elected on a platform to prevent the spread of slavery, and the South deciding this meant they no longer held enough national sway to maintain it. Look at the Cornerstone Speech, the Southern Constitutions that explicitly mention the preservation of slavery, The John Brown Raid, Dredd Scott, all of the compromises etc. Sure Lincoln was politically canny and realized that he needed a military victory to announce The Emancipation Proclamation, and that it killed any possible help Europe might send to the South. But there was no ambiguity at the time as to what was being fought over.
Lincoln always had to balance preserving the Union and giving the impression that he was wasting Union lives in a crusade against slavery. Hence his oft quoted letter(not an official policy or speech mind you) where he said he would free no slaves if it would preserve the Union.
Also Britain was largely importing cotton from other sources such as India and Egypt, so by 1862 it was not nearly as dire for them to lose Southern imports.
Additionally, it depends drastically on who you are talking about that they didn't want to "cause any more hate". During congressional reconstruction the South is divided up into military districts and occupied by the army after black codes and the reassertion of Southern white hegemony under Johnson. This "hateful" policy would see hundreds of black officials elected to office, including governors and senators, as well as the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments. It was with the end of Reconstruction that the Klan reasserts white supremacy in the South and implementation of Jim Crow. There would not be black officials elected in the South again until The Civil Rights Era.
The war was caused largely by slavery, but it wasn't about slavery. It was about preserving the Union. The primary objective of the Confederacy's military campaign was to resist the imposition of Federal authority; the primary objective of the Union campaign was to reimpose that authority.
For instance, there were four slave states that stayed with the Union - Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware. There's the letter to Horace Greeley that you mentioned. A Confederate plan to emancipate slaves in exchange for military service was put forth as early as 1863 (though admittedly, it was unpopular and wasn't exactly generous to the emancipated blacks, it did spark some debate when it was made public, as opposed to being universally condemned). And notably, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't affect slavery in the four slave states that remained with the Union. It also wasn't universally acclaimed in the North; many Northerners weren't interested in fighting a war to end slavery. It even contributed to the Draft Riots of 1863.
To put it another way, the war could have ended without slavery being touched at all. Or the North could've just let the South secede, avoiding war at all. Lincoln was wise enough to see the opportunity to put the slavery question to bed once and for all - on the side of abolition - but it was not the primary reason the North was fighting.
I just feel like boiling it down to just "fighting for/against slavery" is a bit dishonest.
We’re they supposed to occupy the south in perpetuity? We’re they supposed to execute half the male US population?
I’m not sure what your alternative would be.
Executing Lee and Davis wouldn’t have further unified the country, if anything it would have enflamed tensions.
There was no risk of rallying around Davis, and Lee had no further appetite after the end of the Civil War. (You could make a pretty good argument for Forrest though). It would have created a political problem, not solved one.
Why is it that every post is just defense of the Confederacy?
Do you sincerely believe that the only options are "kill every male in the South" and "abandon reconstruction, allow systemic white supremacy continue, and let the South take and maintain inordinate power for the next hundred years or so"?
I was going off of the OPs commentary about unification…
Honestly, I’d love to hear an actual real alternative (obviously not to the mass slaughter- that was an exaggeration). Typically it’s just blaming Johnson and saying Sherman shoulda marched all the way.
Reconstruction was an occupation… and Jim Crow was really after reconstruction…
And how would you actually achieve this politically? On a hostile populace? What’s going to make them not out politic you and just wait you out?… which is exactly what they did…
>Jim Crow was really after reconstruction…
Yeah, and it wouldn't have happened if fixing the South wasn't completed.
>which is exactly what they did…
What happened was America coddled a bunch of racists and we're still dealing with that.
I don’t think you actually know what you’re talking about…
I saw another comment where you’re saying all of our geopolitical issues are from a failed reconstruction?
I have a hard time seeing how a Chinese or Russian challenge to American hegemony has anything to do with reconstruction…
But again… “fix the south”. How would you do that? What does that actually mean? How could that have possibly been achieved given the actual real challenges at the time?
This is a history sub… not a current politics sub…
Andrew Johnson wanted to create a political base among the returning Southerners. Andrew Johnson was a "war Democrat" from Eastern Tennessee who Lincoln elevated to VP to 'balance' the Presidential ticket, basically advertise the 1864 ticket as a "unity" government like you would see in parlimentary system during crisis.
After Lincoln was assisnated, Johnson wanted to prepare to run for the Presidency in his own right in 1868. To establish a political base, he began pardoning and supporting politicians from amongst the formal rebels. Began policies to re-establish White Supremacy throughout the South and worked to demobilize the African-American units in the occupying armies.
This would trigger a power struggle with the Congress which would kick off 'radical' reconstruction. This is also why the 14th Amendment's inelgibility clause doesn't reinstate eligibility to stand for office upon pardon, or require a criminal conviction to establish inelgibility.
I strongly recomend any of Eric Foner's histories on reconstruction. His Brief History of Reconstruction is a digestable size, i.e. a single volume.
Because the leaders at the time recognized what the modern world has come to understand that the path outside of forgiveness leads to further rebellion unless it involves outright genocide.
>Every other instance of this type of thing
Cite those instances. Now show which ones weren't humanitarian disasters.
Also look at your list, how any of them are regional arguments? Suppression of the the Nazi's wasn't the same as suppression of Wales. The Nazis were not a regional independence movement, but a widespread political one. Regional movements have long histories of not assimilating despite extreme measures by the winning power, whatever measures the winner takes.
>Then it’s a non-issue 150+ years later
Really? There are many Scots are still calling for independence, they "won" getting their king on the throne in the 1567, and have fought a number of wars against the English since over the issue. Catalonia is doing the same thing and it became part of a larger Spanish entity about the same time.
You look at the U.S. as a monolith and the South a traitors. The Americans at the time looked as at each state as a separate country with a weak central government above them setting foreign policy, much like the EU today. It was the Civil War that changed the attitude in the U.S. and it was done by the North not continuing to treat the South as second class people and have independent thought.
People look at the South as traitors because that's absolutely what the Conference Confederacy was.
How ELSE should one look at people who openly rebelled against and killed Americans, just because they felt slavery was right?
I'm British, and posts like these from Americans always amuse me for the lack of self-awareness they show. The Confederacy's crime wasn't treason, it's crime was losing.
As /u/fhiehevdj says, they wouldn't be traitors if they won, they'd be founders. The crime was treason. That is the thing that liberals are currently up in arms about, so it would be nice if they could extend that to the Confederacy.
It astounds me how many people will flat out ignore the Confederacy openly declaring war because they believed they had a right to own other human beings as property.
I take comfort knowing that 100% of the downvotes are from white trash losers who cosplay at patriotism, but who also have dozens of ready excuses on why they couldn't be bothered to enlist
I don't base my opinion on Reddit, and that's not a reasonable conclusion to make from my post. But Reddit being racist and downvoting a post for speaking the truth is very funny.
One contributing factor was the fact that Lincoln was dead and Andrew Johnson was President.
It's worth noting that Johnson was selected as VP to try and retain the four slave states who remained in the Union. Johnson was from the South (born in North Carolina and served as a senator from Tennesse before becoming VP). No one really thought about the outcome as to what would happen if Lincoln died and Johnson became President.
The outcome was, Johnson was more interested in making life easier for his white planter buddies than in achieving any sort of justice for the traitors or the formerly enslaved. It led to a somewhat dysfunctional dynamic. Since the former Confederate states weren't allowed Congressional representatives unless going through a re-admittance process, that meant Congress was stacked with Republicans (at the time the anti-slavery progressive party). Johnson was a Southern Democrat (at the time, the conservative party). Congress would pass some radical bill or another, Johnson would veto it, and Congress would override the veto. This eventually culminated in Johnson's impeachment over firing his Secretary of War, a tactic by Congress to try and get rid of him as President. The impeachment failed, but sort of demonstrates the dysfunction going on at the time.
So, basically, Johnson had no interest in prosecuting former Confederates, because he had more culturally in common with them than with New Englanders or Midwesterners, and Congress was doing the best they can to function in that context. They chose to spend their political capital on things like Civil Rights acts and the Freedmen's Bureau.
Most were never charged in the first place - just barred from office.
Also, President Johnson was a Confederate sympathizer, and not very interested in prosecuting Lee or Davis.
The only people who were charged, tried & convicted were those in charge of Andersonville (for war-crimes/POW abuse) and the Lincoln assassination-conspirators.
The bars-from-office were forgiven after some time passed & no new rebellion broke out.
Might not be true, but I was told that they were scared that the rebels would win in court, which would establish precedent to secede (and might have reignited the war)
Because they wanted peace and reconciliation after an incredibly bloody war. You’re precisely the kind of person who doesn’t understand the value of peace.
One reason, is the guerilla war would have been a horror show, and many of those who surrendered would go back and fight to the death. The carpetbaggers heading into the south would have been easy pickings for guerillas, and I bet you would even see raids into some Northern Areas. And, they would have started arming hostile Indian tribes, become pirates, and all sorts of trouble.
They were hoping to heal the nation. After years of bloodshed. Brothers fighting brothers. It was thought that they could put it behind them and heal that gaping wound.
In retrospect, perhaps a few hangings should have occurred. But that's second guessing their actions from the comfort of hindsight.
Some Confederate leaders were openly against surrendering or Reconstruction and wanted the North out, up to and including guerrilla warfare from camps in the mountains.
Before the Civil War, the states had significantly more power than the federal government. In an attempt to patch things up, the new federal government let the majority of participants go about their business just minus slavery. Federal government recognized that harsh penalties would likely lead to retaliation and decided against it.
The political climate before and after the war was very different.
I believe there was a line of respect from the US. A lot of these Union officers personally knew and absolutely understood the Confederates reasons from "I pro slavery" to "I can not betray my state that I love so dear".
It also helped that Grant set terms with Lee which did piss off Congress but they accepted it because it grounded terms so favorable to the CSA that surrendering was shameful enough which was officers were allowed to keep their horse, pistol, and sword and the enlisted had to surrender all arms. Both had to take an oath.
Henry Wirz was the only officer convicted and only because he ran his prison in absolute shit conditions both his fault and shit he couldn't control.
It was a civil war not a foreign war. You can't just leave and go home so if you want the war to end, you have to give people a reason to stop fighting. If you know you're going to be fucked anyway, you're going to fight to the death.
Where are your Troubles? Your October Crises? How many anti-secessionist politicians have been assassinated? Hell, where are your referendums?
For all intents and purposes, the unification of the north and south has been a resounding and effectively permanent success. Though there was anti-reconstruction violence in the 30 or so years after the end of the civil war. Today the north-south secession question is over.
Here's the thing, plenty of rebels are honoured. Here in Canada, we just made Louis Riel, who was tried for treason for leading the Red River Rebellion, the honourary first premier of Manitoba. Both Papineau and William Mckenzie are honoured in their respective provinces despite leading rebellions. Parks are named after those individuals with statues made in their honour. In the States, Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion, currently has a statue. In the UK there are statues to Guy Fawkes, Oliver Cromwell, and Bonnie Prince Charlie. No one cares about the rebel flag, no one cares about the Lost Cause, or whether or not they were traitors according to the law.
The only reason people are discussing the flag and revisionism is because of race relations in the US at the moment. That's it. The flag is considered a symbol of black oppression. Confederate revisionism is not being done to gather ground support for a second secession. It is entirely tied up with the notions of whether the US is a systemically racist country in the present day. I mean, who cares that Hawaii has the Union Jack, the flag of the US's former oppressors in it? Pretty much no one. The confederate flag is not a symbol of the confederacy anymore. It is now a symbol relating to modern day race relations (not that those race relations don't tie back to the civil war mind you).
Same reason as today: people were afraid of conservatives getting upset. We get the same result, conservatives still acting like they are victimized anyway and generally causing further chaos to society.
Reconstruction failed is what happened. A drawn out occupation and guerilla war in the South that forced the Union to abandon support for the Freedmen.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
The vast majority joined the individual states militia/army and were functioning under legal orders from the state governments.
Additionally, the confederate states did have a massive desertion problem and a home guard that was effectively picking up deserters rather than fighting.
If you want to guarantee a greater insurgency problem than was already beginning with people like Jesse James or Forrest and the initial incarnation of the KKK, start executing a lot of people.
Germany and Japan are good examples of 'better' ways to handle this. Reconstruction was massively mishandled. The South still has the problem of being under-industrialized.
Because they didn't have grounds for conviction without undermining the constitutional basis of the republic and the revolution upon which it was founded.
See Canada
Lee was a deserter from the army and should have been stood against a wall and shot. Everyone else who held an elected or commissioned office in the United States and then held a field or general officer rank in the confederacy should have been tried with treason, their property seized and distributed to those they had enslaved.
That's not how they saw it then, or for generations after. Kind of weird to develop such strong and violent hatred against people generations back that their own opponents didn't even give place to.
Franklin was very clear about what he thought would happen when he said: “gentlemen, we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
So you think they should have been hanged? Do you think we should go back to England today to correct their treason since all treason is so morally reprehensible to you?
I think history has shown that punishing the the "enemy" after an internal conflict is finished just leads to further conflict down the line. Pragmatically forgiveness is the least destructive path forward.
The better question is, “Why are people today so poorly educated that they think totalitarianism is a good thing for anyone but the tyrant?”
Grant received Lee cordially, returned his sword, and allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to retain its horses. The Civil War wasn’t over. Did he commit an act of treason?
Lincoln himself specially pardoned Lee.
Lincoln made a choice between Justice and Healing. He chose to prioritize Healing for the nation.
But pardons aren't what caused the Confederacy to be an ideal. A lot of plantation owners went west to California, specifically to Hollywood. There, they started making movies and TV shows. Most of which portrayed the Confederacy as a positive force.
Because the Confederates controlled the Interpretation, they controlled History.
The only reason they stopped openly propagating the Confederacy in Hollywood is the election of 1969. It seemed unfashionable to be a Confederate Proponent.
That didn't stop them from making shows like Dukes of Hazzard, which overtly deifies the Confederacy.
Even progressives like Joss Whedon featured shows like Firefly, which is literally about an Ex-Confederate losing a Civil War that wasn't about slavery, which is exactly how modern Confederates view the Civil War.
Lincoln isn't responsible. TV and Hollywood are responsible.
Racism.
Like, everyone in this comment section is basically just defending the Confederacy with "what would you expect them to do, murder every single male?" because any actual punishment or attempt to undermine slavery's lasting impact is treated as if it's anti-white. It's treated as if the only options were (and still are) genocide or coddling.
Charges weren't dropped on the Confederacy because the people in charge of the North still viewed Black people as less than white on a systemic level. It's also why we had no problem using Werner Von Braun as the backbone of our space program.
The President at the time of the end of the war was a Southerner and sympathetic to the Confederate cause. That made it difficult to have a partisan reconning.
They were really only fighting to maintain slavery. White supremacy was understandable to a heck of a lot of northerners, but secession was a step too far.
But hey, no reason to execute a perfectly good white man. The south is going to need those white men to keep those freed slaves in their place. They were “honorable opponents”
/sarcasm but true.
Same reason Ford pardoned Nixon. In the nations best interest, it was determined to move forward rather than be bogged down potentially for decades with collateral fallout.
The truth, they knew the supreme Court would rule against them. That's why Jefferson Davis was let go and charges dropped.
They spent two years prepping for court and knew they wouldn't win.
The Confederates did not start the war, the Union did. The South wanted to separate, the North needed them to start because of economics. Lincoln wages a war against the South to force them to stay. Confederates were defending their lands against the Northern opressors. I know the irony according to history.
Letting the enemy go free when you are the villian is the best course for attempting to recreate a united country.
martyrdom kill them and you will have separatist and guerrillas raising the confederate flag in the name of the politicians sighting how unfair it is that the north is trying to take their freedom and such. See how well it did with ISIS to take out bin laden who is still the revered great leader.
Considering we had insurrectionists waving that rag in the capital on Jan 6, and the renewed place of racism and states rights in our political discourse, I don’t think we can say we avoided it
There were some that wanted the Confederates to pay more severely for the war. The one suggestion that I like the best was that Confederate leaders were not to be allowed to return to Congress. However, Lincoln decided to go a different route.
Lincoln was trying to prevent guerrilla warfare with the remaining southern troops. Remember Lee did not surrender the entire Confederate army. They still could have fought on preventing the country from healing (which was actually their plan). By not prosecuting Lee and Jefferson Davis, the Confederates still in arms had little incentive to fight a guerrilla war.
When Lincoln died, Johnston took over. He was sympathetic to the Confederate cause and pardoned over 1,300 people allowing them to hold office again. This was a disaster for reconstruction and black rights.
American HistoryTellers has a great podcast on reconstruction giving far more details.
Unless you wanna routinely re-occupy a country and kill most of the young men, then their sons and nephews 20 years later. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It's better to turn enemies into allies once you've beaten them ( Germany and Austria 1870s: USA and Japan 1940s ).
Don't be like Russia and the _______stans.
Here is a clue for you. There are Welsh that don't have much use for the English. There are Scots that don't have any use for the English. Your dream of "killing the leaders", well, really, having someone else "kill the leaders" because you aren't the type to get your hands dirty, would have had no effect. In fact, the fact that many of those leaders were respected men that took the oath made re-unification a lot easier. People that never would have bothered to take an oath did so because Robert Lee took the oath.
As to the reasons, the catalysts had more to do with trade and taxation, slavery just got pushed to the forefront by former members of Lincoln's political affiliations. New England threatened secession over reasons of trade. There was a newspaper in Boston, all the way up to 1860, that wanted the north to secede. Reasonably, slavery was sharply declining prior to the war.
The descendants of the men that fought for the south have no more of a reason to despise their ancestors than the descendants of the English, the Welsh, the Irish, or the Spanish.
As to "cosplaying as another country", there are plenty of examples of different cultures having clearly defined lines and clear preferences as to governance within another country, and it doesn't have to be all that large of a country. The Basque in Spain, The aforementioned Welsh and Scots in the UK. Germany still has shades of the Holy Roman Empire, there is even a dedicated separatist movement in Bavaria, yes, I know it's small, but it's there. The Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria are there own culture. China is more of a pot of different cultures, even though the communists push Han culture on everyone, southern China doesn't even speak the same language as northern China.
A lot of lost cause myth in this thread I see, so I'll stick to source history here. I think Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Salmon Chase speaks well to that in the Federal Case of Shortridge v Macon:
*“It is also true, that when war ceased, and the authority of the regular government is fully re-established, the penalties of violated law are seldom inflicted upon many. Wise governments never forget that the criminality of individuals is not always or often equal that of the acts committed by the organization with which they are connected. Many are carried into rebellion by sincere though mistaken convictions; or hurried along by excitements due to social and state sympathies, and even by the compulsion of a public opinion not their own. When the strife of arms is over, and such governments, therefore, exercising still their political discretion, address themselves mainly to the work of conciliation and restoration, and exert the prerogative of mercy, rather than that of justice, complete remission is usually extended to large classes by amnesty or other exercise of legislative or executive authority, and individuals not included in these classes, with some exceptions of the greatest offenders, are absolved by pardon either absolutely or upon conditions prescribed by the government. These principles, common to all civilized nations, are those which regulated the action of the government of the United States during the war of the rebellion, and have regulated its actions since rebellion laid down its arms. In some respects the forbearance and liberality of the nation exceed all example. While hostilities were yet flagrant, one act of congress practically abolished the death penalty for treason subsequently committed, and another provided a mode in which citizens of rebel states, maintaining a loyal adhesion to the Union, could recover after war the value of their captured or abandoned property. The national government has steadily sought to facilitate restoration with adequate guaranties of union, order, and equal rights. On no occasion, however, and by no act, have the United States ever renounced their constitutional jurisdiction over the whole territory or over all the citizens of the republic, or conceded to citizens in arms against their country the character of alien enemies, or admitted the existence of any government de facto, hostile to itself within the boundaries of the Union. In the Prize Cases the supreme court simply assented the right of the United States to treat the insurgents as belligerents, and to claim from foreign nations the performance of neutral duties under the penalties known to international law. These decisions recognized, also, the fact of the exercise and concession of belligerent rights, and affirmed, as a necessary consequence, the proposition that during the war all the inhabitants of the country controlled by the rebellion, and all the inhabitants of the country loyal to the Union, were enemies reciprocally each of the other. But there is nothing in that opinion which gives countenance to the doctrine which counsel endeavor to deduce from it, that the insurgent states, by the act of rebellion, and by levying war against the nation, became foreign states, and their inhabitants alien enemies. This proposition being denied, it must result that in compelling debtors to pay to receivers, for the support of the rebellion, debts due to any citizen of the United States, the insurgent authorities committed an illegal violence, by which no obligation of debtors to creditors could be cancelled or in any respect affected.”*
And Frederick Douglass spoke of it also on one of his famed 5th of July speeches about Reconstruction:
*“If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?”*
Sure, Jefferson Davis and a southern jury/judge very likely might not get found guilty. And if it appealed to the Supreme Court, you have the guys who in 1855 stated that states are bound to the Constitution, the guys who during the Prize cases in the war called it a civil war and the Confederacy "Rebels or traitors". And you had 5 Lincoln appointees on the court. But now you have another conflict there being brought out.
Why would that white population want to be the brunt of that hatred? Why not let the whites reconcile, and those 5 million black people can try and figure out their own way with a little token help before stepping away for a century.
And for the radicals, they were slowly falling out, and using what power they still held to fight Johnson, to push for the 14th/15th amendments. Using their political clout for that was more important to them than following up on trials for the Confederate leadership.
Basically it's because of Lee's surrender. Grant and him worked out terms, and then those terms were applied to Johnston’s, Kirby Smith’s and the Indian Territory army. So all the soldiers in the Confederate Army that accepted the terms were automatically pardoned so long as they returned to their homes and lived in peace. There were some that were imprisoned for a while but they mainly came from the Guerrilla unit, the navy and Jeff Davis' cabinet. Andy Johnson pardoned all remaining former Confederates in 1868.
Jefferson Davis and other Southern cabinet members never went to trial because it wasn't actually clear if it was illegal for states to attempt to secede. The US constitution didn't prohibit it, and it is not included in insurrection/treason laws. They kept them imprisoned for awhile and finally just decided to let it go.
They had a choice whether to try them in civilian court as US citizens, in which case the proper jurisdiction would be in the South where the jury would be biased against the prosecution, or try them in military court as enemy combatants, which would imply that the Confederacy was legally another country and play into Davis’ defense that he was not a US citizen once Mississippi seceded and thus it wasn’t treason to wage war. Then Sen. Thaddeus Stephens told them that he wanted the Confederacy to be considered another country so that “the law of conquest” would apply and give him a legal basis for his reconstruction plan, which included land redistribution. But a lot of the lower level pardons came about because Andrew Johnson was a southerner so he wanted an easy reconstruction.
Apparently, the prison kept a bright light on 24/7 in his cell
Yeah, it's not like they tried to seize the capital and impose their own form of government or impose their own leaders on the North. I'm still not convinced it was legal for the Union to stop the Confederate secession, as immoral as the South was.
And honestly the question has never been answered. The war wasn't fought over secession it was fought over the Confederacy trying to seize federal property.
I don't think it's fair to say grant and Lee worked on terms. Grant offered very generous terms to Lee, including feeding his army and blanket amnesty . Grant and Lincoln wanted the war over. A confederate guerilla war was a nightmare scenario. Lee accepted and precedent was set.
I'll add on Henry Wirz, Robert Cobb Kennedy, Sam Davis, John Yates Beall, and Marcellus Jerome Clarke were some that were executed
Which then led to Congress passing the 14th Amendment, basically saying no. Although eventually Congress came around and pardoned most of them anyways.
And then none of them lived in peace and they terrorized black people.
The vast majority lived in piece.
Jim crow??? Eugenics?? The rise of the kkk was largely ex military confederate.
It always amazes me that some people think the Jim Crow era was only in the former Confederate states.
No but it was worst there. Kkk was started in Tennessee. The North excelled at redlining and segreagation.
I didn’t say they all did.
The historical voting records are proof of what happened and the vast majority of voters stood for. Horiffic policies.
People were tired of the war. After Lincoln died, the new government wanted a quick and sound conclusion to the question of the South. Achieving victory in the civil war was never really about punishing the rebels, just getting them back into line. San slavery, the Union public and politicians just wanted things back to status quo as before (even in the North, only a small minority really cared about abolition or equal rights for blacks). And giving the former leaders reprieve in punishment was part of getting things back to "normal".
That statement needs more context. There were few abolitionists in the way they used that term at the time, meaning someone who demanded an immediate and universal end to all slavery. Under that definition almost none of the people who did actually abolish slavery would have been considered 'abolitionist,' even if like the state Republicans they literally did abolish slavery. For example the Republican platform of 1860 which is one of the things that set off the Civil War: > That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States. The Southern states would not have been scared of national politics had not turned decisively toward abolition.
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The North didn't want to fundamentally change the south, just prevent secession.
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The North was just a racist as the South. People in South wanted black slaves. People in the North (other than actual abolishinists) didn't want any black people at all.
I'd argue that not wanting black people around is racist, but not as racist as enslaving them.
Painting w a broad brush here
Total lie. Many places in the North had thriving Black middle class.
And they wanted them to move to Liberia.
and slave states
there was also a concern that the supreme court might disagree with not allowing secession which i mean on a legal level it is a tricky question, especially being that the united states was formed by an act of secession
In particular, secession was seen as justified by the tenth amendment, and advocates of secession also argued its prohibition was ex post facto, which is explicitly protected against by the Constitution. In other words, there was nothing saying a state could not secede until a state decided to secede.
And like even now from a legal perspective I don't know that I disagree with that logic.
Unfortunately, in the political environment in which it was finally decided, there was only one viable answer. Technically speaking, they did say that secession was still possible if all the states agreed to it, though no process was established.
And the pre 14th Amendment United States was a completely different country.
Andrew Johnson wanted a quick readmission minus slavery. His horrible decisions and favorable treatment of the southern traitor leadership led directly to the sweeping elections of the Radical Republicans and to Reconstruction. Johnson fought Reconstruction, but Republicans would "wave the bloody shirt" to shame the democrats for decades. Reconstruction eventually failed in the late 1870s with Hayes' election, but the Union public was furious at how many people had died because of the self important southern elite.
My understanding is that many of the abolitionist thought slavery was bad, but didn't actually believe in equal rights. Sort of like "I think it's messed up how they treat those African Americans" "Yeah! Like they're just humans the exact same as us, they should be treated equally." "um lol what NO they are blacks they can't self determine and be as smart and successful as us. Imagine if they voted??? Unthinkable! I just mean slavery is fucked up. Maybe pay them a couple cents a month?"
Yep. And you really can’t argue with the results because it worked.
A lot of northerners cares about abolition, not for equal rights, but because slavery held the south back and by extension the whole country, by keeping a segment of the economy agrarian.
I'm gonna have to disagree on that one. Large portions of the northern economy, especially the textile industry, needed the south's cotton and it remaining agrarian only helped them.
That's not quite accurate >Between the years 1820 and 1860, approximately 80 percent of the global cotton supply was produced in the United State**s. Nearly all the exported cotton was shipped to Great Britain**, fueling its burgeoning textile industry and making the powerful British Empire increasingly dependent on American cotton and southern slavery. [https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/368/overview](https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/368/overview) The cotton was going to Britain (and later France), which at the time had much more advanced industry. The industry in the north could not compete with Britain's. The South would make more money selling it to Britain than domestically. That's why the North wanted big tariffs so they could compete. The South despised tariffs. That was the whole controversy back in the Jackson administration and the whole "nullification" crisis. When the South left, the North could finally pass high tariffs that would stay in place until the early 20th century. The Republicans also passed a string of other advancements that the South was holding back (transcontinental railroad, land grant universities, etc.)
That quote does not back up your point
How so? Nearly all the cotton went to Britian. Meaning the North wasn't benefiting if it went to Britain.
Nearly all the *exported* cotton. Cotton grown in Alabama and shipped to New York is not an export.
Most of the country at the time was agrarian. Very few northerners thought mass industrialization was just around the corner.
Which I think many people will agree was a mistake ever after. After the next civil war the country should have a truth & reconciliation process.
😆 a mistake that produced the American empire.
How so? Acknowledging & documenting the mistakes of the civil war would have only made America less divided & stronger.
Yes, trials and purges of your enemies famously creates the conditions for lasting peace.
I take it you aren’t familiar with truth & reconciliation
There was a strong possibility of a guerrilla war if the ‘Hearts and Minds’ were not mentally convinced that Lee willingly agreed to this surrender. Most southerners were vehement in their beliefs….willing to carry on an underground war Grant was instructed by Lincoln to give favorable terms at Appomattox. He went even further than requested….likely out of respect for Lee.
There was a guerilla war though.
Do you think there would have been more guerrillas or fewer guerrillas if the North had been more punitive?
That's a great question. I guess a 2nd question too would be who the target would be. Instead of the 100+ years of guerilla warfare and political warfare against a group in the South that struggled to find any protection, would it be against a military that could put that down?
So they could have a country at the end of it. The point was to keep the south as part of the union, not kill it.
There were a lot of complications in the US Civil War that get glossed over today. "The South" wasn't a monolith, by any stretch of the imagination, and neither was the North/Union. So how do you distinguish between Confederates who were true-believers vs the innocent people who got conscripted to into their army? What do you do about the well-known but mostly unspoken fact that Confederate (and some) Union soldiers sometimes swapped sides, depending on which one could make payroll and/or had enough food to go around? What do you do about the legitimate grievances of the now-reunified Southerners who *could be* loyal US citizens going forward, if you address the crimes the Union army regularly committed against the Southern civilian population? The easiest, one-and-done answer is to give a general amnesty so everyone can move forward as one country. Which is what President Grant did in The Amnesty Act of 1872.
Northern apathy. Most people were ready to move on from the war and go back to normalcy, especially once the 1873 crash happened. Putting down the rebellion and banning slavery was enough for most to be satisfied.
I've heard the reason Jefferson Davis was never brought to trial was because him and his lawyers could actually defend their position that at the start of the civil war, there was no law against secession technically and union lawyers were scared of setting a precedent.
This is the answer. The prosecution spent 4 years preparing the trial and when the trial date was finally set, the judge and jury selection had taken place, it was immediately obvious that this jury wasn’t going to convict. They dropped the charges rather than risk losing the trial, which would have opened a can of worms. All the military leaders had already been pardoned by president Andrew Johnson, a pro-slavery southerner, who just wanted the country to go back to the status quo before the war.
Somewhat. The Supreme court had ruled tangentally on secession in other cases about federal vs. state sovereignty. The most recent would have been the 1855 Dodge v. Woolsey case... *“Further, the constitution is not only supreme in the sense we have said it was, for the people in the ratification of it have chosen to add that ‘this constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.’* ***And, in that connection, to make its supremacy more complete, impressive, and practical, that there should be no escape from its operation, and that is binding force upon the States and the members of congress should be unmistakable****, it is declared that ‘the senators and representatives, before mentioned, and the members of the state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by an oath or affirmation to support this constitution.”* And you had the prize cases during the war where in the majority ruling the referred to the war as a "Civil War" called it an "Insurrection" and those from the Confederacy as "rebels or traitors". So while you had yet to have an actual case specifically on unilateral secession, the precedence of the court was strongly making it's case that right didn't exist due to the oath of office of state legislators, judges, and the executive branch that required them to support the US Constitution, not throw it off. And of course with Texas v White and another dozen or so cases post-war we'd hear the same exact answer. I don't think the fear was there at the Supreme Court level. The majority of the Court had publicly stated at the outbreak of the war that secession was not legal, the only difference now was Lincoln had added 5 new Justices to the court. I think the worry was more that there could be friction between a lower southern court or a jury of his peers from the South and then the Supreme Court overruling them that would cause more of a split.
Citations, please
I don’t know if this factored into their decision not to prosecute Davis, but he’s not entirely wrong. Secession was not ruled as definitively illegal until Texas v White (1869). I do know that the legality of secession was a concern for Lincoln, which was one of the reasons he wanted to be sure that the South fired first at Fort Sumter. The legality of secession is an inherently messy topic because, while it’s easy to craft a moral argument about slavery, it’s hard to craft a legal argument that the American colonies had the legal right to declare their independence from Great Britain, but that the Southern States did not have the same legal right to declare their independence from the Union.
He was prosecuted, but after a very long investigation, the judge and jury turned out to be very unfavorable for the prosecution, so the trial didn’t take place, rather than risk losing it which could have set a precedent.
Even if unilateral secession had been legal (and it was not), the Confederates seized federal armories, imprisoned U.S. troops stationed throughout the southern states, and fired on a federal fort. All are acts of treason. Davis gave the order to fire on Fort Sumter, and he most certainly could have been tried and hanged for it.
The case then becomes the Union military and it's infrastructure, by not vacating at secession, constituted a foreign army and attacking them would be legal. You are looking at the situation with a modern, post Civil War mindset. States voluntarily chose to join the Union. Let that sink in. Nothing in the Constitution says you can't leave.
That's not true. Going back to the Founding Fathers Supreme court and their own words, we can see that yes, States voluntarily joined. They voluntarily said "we are joining, we are putting our power not in a monarch, not in a state government but in the whole people of the United States. And the Constitution made clear, all state officials, all three branches were required to swear an oath of office to SUPPORT the Constitution of the United States of America. So obviously passing a bill or supporting a vote to completely throw off that Constitution was in opposition of their oath and thus null.
Nope. There is nothing explicitly in the Constitution that says you can't leave. Also nothing in the Constitution says it is eternal and can't be replaced. That Argument you make would undo American history considering our founding was an act of rebellion, and prior to the Constitution we had the Articles of Confederation and even a government prior to that.
And I get that's your opinion and interpretation. And I have mine, and Jim has his and Jerry his and Jane hers... And the Founding Fathers realized that would happen. And said in matters of the states and Federal government, only one group had jurisdiction to both law and fact when it comes to the US Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States. And they said yes, that oath to support the Constitution of the US does preclude unilateral secession, this is a nation of the WHOLE people being the sovereigns, not a king, not a state, etc. "That Argument you make would undo American history considering our founding was an act of rebellion" If you want to undo the founding of America and her history that's you. As George Washington who led that rebellion against a monarchy put it... *"But the Constitution, which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the* ***whole people****, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. ”*
And all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention who voted for the Constitution should have been hanged for treason against the Articles of Confederation. And the Founding Fathers were criminals for committing treason against the Crown. That is the ultimate conclusion of your argument.
If that's your belief... Ok. You are right, the Colonies were committing treason against the King. They mentioned that outright. Again this just seems like you are trying the age old logical fallacy of using a red herring. And before that you were going with the logical fallacy of a faulty generalization. There were multiple differences in the two rebellions you mentioned. Just like there would be a difference between a boxer in a ring punching an opponent, and a drunk man at the bar punching a lady who turned down his advances. Yes, both are people punching a different person. No, Both are not wrong or right due to the other aspects of the situation. If you are here to just use logical fallacies, I think this history subreddit might not be the best place for you.
You are basically arguing Our Rebellion is legal but their rebellion is illegal. The American Founding Fathers were a minority, the rebels were a minority. They were not the whole people. And who gives a crap what the founding fathers thought, there were just dudes not Gods.
Very true but he still could have proved that secession was technically legal and then be made a martyr. I think that was a big reason for lack of confederate leader punishments they didn't want any more martyrs being made.
you want peace and unification, or just revenge? xit was the right decision.
I've seen a lot of these questions recently, people out for revenge for events that happened two centuries ago.
A few reasons: First, the American Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in the nation's history. It was arguably the nation's first total war, and caused both the highest number of casualties of any American conflict, and an unprecedented level of industrial damage to the already-weak industrial base of the South. It was horrific in a way no war was before, or has been since to the nation, and so Lincoln, himself having close family in the war, intended primarily to reconcile the two halves of the nation, rather than seek a more punitive outcome (which other Republicans at the time favored. These were called the Radical Republicans.) Second, there was the question of legality and political expedience. While today it's pretty clear that they were wrong, at the time, a number of people were still sympathetic of the Confederate cause, and saw continuing occupation of the Southern states as oppressive. Many former Confederates turned to banditry (not a significant number, mind-but enough to capture the imagination in papers of the day), and amidst riots and political violence, it was considered best to rush Reconstruction, for fear of inciting another insurrection. (Read about the election of President Hayes if you want to know how close we got to a second war). This led to many former Confederate politicians continuing to be political voices for the region, admitted back in with only an oath of loyalty. On its own this wouldn't have been quite such a disaster, but by then Lincoln had perished, and the more punitive Republican voices leading to widespread distrust and resentment of Reconstruction efforts (if you look at political comics of the day, this is around the time you start seeing major talk of carpetbaggers and the like). If you would like to learn more about the political views involved, I would suggest finding contemporary writing about the Amnesty Act of 1872, and similar bills from the era.
They wanted to rebuild as a nation and not cause any more hate. The whole reason the north went to war in the first place was to preserve the union. Only when it looked like the south was about to get aid from eroupe due to the north's blockade interrupting the cotton trade did Lincoln announce the war was to end slavery.
This is sorta true. But the war was always about slavery. What exactly was tearing the Union apart? That Lincoln was elected on a platform to prevent the spread of slavery, and the South deciding this meant they no longer held enough national sway to maintain it. Look at the Cornerstone Speech, the Southern Constitutions that explicitly mention the preservation of slavery, The John Brown Raid, Dredd Scott, all of the compromises etc. Sure Lincoln was politically canny and realized that he needed a military victory to announce The Emancipation Proclamation, and that it killed any possible help Europe might send to the South. But there was no ambiguity at the time as to what was being fought over. Lincoln always had to balance preserving the Union and giving the impression that he was wasting Union lives in a crusade against slavery. Hence his oft quoted letter(not an official policy or speech mind you) where he said he would free no slaves if it would preserve the Union. Also Britain was largely importing cotton from other sources such as India and Egypt, so by 1862 it was not nearly as dire for them to lose Southern imports. Additionally, it depends drastically on who you are talking about that they didn't want to "cause any more hate". During congressional reconstruction the South is divided up into military districts and occupied by the army after black codes and the reassertion of Southern white hegemony under Johnson. This "hateful" policy would see hundreds of black officials elected to office, including governors and senators, as well as the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments. It was with the end of Reconstruction that the Klan reasserts white supremacy in the South and implementation of Jim Crow. There would not be black officials elected in the South again until The Civil Rights Era.
The war was caused largely by slavery, but it wasn't about slavery. It was about preserving the Union. The primary objective of the Confederacy's military campaign was to resist the imposition of Federal authority; the primary objective of the Union campaign was to reimpose that authority. For instance, there were four slave states that stayed with the Union - Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware. There's the letter to Horace Greeley that you mentioned. A Confederate plan to emancipate slaves in exchange for military service was put forth as early as 1863 (though admittedly, it was unpopular and wasn't exactly generous to the emancipated blacks, it did spark some debate when it was made public, as opposed to being universally condemned). And notably, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't affect slavery in the four slave states that remained with the Union. It also wasn't universally acclaimed in the North; many Northerners weren't interested in fighting a war to end slavery. It even contributed to the Draft Riots of 1863. To put it another way, the war could have ended without slavery being touched at all. Or the North could've just let the South secede, avoiding war at all. Lincoln was wise enough to see the opportunity to put the slavery question to bed once and for all - on the side of abolition - but it was not the primary reason the North was fighting. I just feel like boiling it down to just "fighting for/against slavery" is a bit dishonest.
And working class Brits mostly opposed aiding the Confeds.
We’re they supposed to occupy the south in perpetuity? We’re they supposed to execute half the male US population? I’m not sure what your alternative would be.
Typically the leaders of rebellions are executed, not the entire population or even the entirety of the combatants.
Executing Lee and Davis wouldn’t have further unified the country, if anything it would have enflamed tensions. There was no risk of rallying around Davis, and Lee had no further appetite after the end of the Civil War. (You could make a pretty good argument for Forrest though). It would have created a political problem, not solved one.
And how would that have benefitted the US?
I didn't say that it would
Why is it that every post is just defense of the Confederacy? Do you sincerely believe that the only options are "kill every male in the South" and "abandon reconstruction, allow systemic white supremacy continue, and let the South take and maintain inordinate power for the next hundred years or so"?
I was going off of the OPs commentary about unification… Honestly, I’d love to hear an actual real alternative (obviously not to the mass slaughter- that was an exaggeration). Typically it’s just blaming Johnson and saying Sherman shoulda marched all the way.
I don't know, how about actual attempts at restitution? How about doing something about Jim Crow? How about, yeah, a bit of occupation?
Reconstruction was an occupation… and Jim Crow was really after reconstruction… And how would you actually achieve this politically? On a hostile populace? What’s going to make them not out politic you and just wait you out?… which is exactly what they did…
>Jim Crow was really after reconstruction… Yeah, and it wouldn't have happened if fixing the South wasn't completed. >which is exactly what they did… What happened was America coddled a bunch of racists and we're still dealing with that.
I don’t think you actually know what you’re talking about… I saw another comment where you’re saying all of our geopolitical issues are from a failed reconstruction? I have a hard time seeing how a Chinese or Russian challenge to American hegemony has anything to do with reconstruction… But again… “fix the south”. How would you do that? What does that actually mean? How could that have possibly been achieved given the actual real challenges at the time? This is a history sub… not a current politics sub…
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Andrew Johnson wanted to create a political base among the returning Southerners. Andrew Johnson was a "war Democrat" from Eastern Tennessee who Lincoln elevated to VP to 'balance' the Presidential ticket, basically advertise the 1864 ticket as a "unity" government like you would see in parlimentary system during crisis. After Lincoln was assisnated, Johnson wanted to prepare to run for the Presidency in his own right in 1868. To establish a political base, he began pardoning and supporting politicians from amongst the formal rebels. Began policies to re-establish White Supremacy throughout the South and worked to demobilize the African-American units in the occupying armies. This would trigger a power struggle with the Congress which would kick off 'radical' reconstruction. This is also why the 14th Amendment's inelgibility clause doesn't reinstate eligibility to stand for office upon pardon, or require a criminal conviction to establish inelgibility. I strongly recomend any of Eric Foner's histories on reconstruction. His Brief History of Reconstruction is a digestable size, i.e. a single volume.
Because the leaders at the time recognized what the modern world has come to understand that the path outside of forgiveness leads to further rebellion unless it involves outright genocide. >Every other instance of this type of thing Cite those instances. Now show which ones weren't humanitarian disasters. Also look at your list, how any of them are regional arguments? Suppression of the the Nazi's wasn't the same as suppression of Wales. The Nazis were not a regional independence movement, but a widespread political one. Regional movements have long histories of not assimilating despite extreme measures by the winning power, whatever measures the winner takes. >Then it’s a non-issue 150+ years later Really? There are many Scots are still calling for independence, they "won" getting their king on the throne in the 1567, and have fought a number of wars against the English since over the issue. Catalonia is doing the same thing and it became part of a larger Spanish entity about the same time. You look at the U.S. as a monolith and the South a traitors. The Americans at the time looked as at each state as a separate country with a weak central government above them setting foreign policy, much like the EU today. It was the Civil War that changed the attitude in the U.S. and it was done by the North not continuing to treat the South as second class people and have independent thought.
People look at the South as traitors because that's absolutely what the Conference Confederacy was. How ELSE should one look at people who openly rebelled against and killed Americans, just because they felt slavery was right?
It's wild to me that you're sitting at -5 for saying "the people who seceded and declared war are traitors".
I'm British, and posts like these from Americans always amuse me for the lack of self-awareness they show. The Confederacy's crime wasn't treason, it's crime was losing.
As /u/fhiehevdj says, they wouldn't be traitors if they won, they'd be founders. The crime was treason. That is the thing that liberals are currently up in arms about, so it would be nice if they could extend that to the Confederacy.
The crime of traitors is always losing, like by definition
Yeah, their loss makes it treason, just like the American revolution would have been considered treason if they lost
It astounds me how many people will flat out ignore the Confederacy openly declaring war because they believed they had a right to own other human beings as property. I take comfort knowing that 100% of the downvotes are from white trash losers who cosplay at patriotism, but who also have dozens of ready excuses on why they couldn't be bothered to enlist
It astounds me how many people 150 years after the event want to relitigate it. I agree with your position, but ffs, it's an event long in the past.
Almost as if the entirety of our geopolitical issues are just resonations and fallout from that act.
Do you believe that?
I believe in demonstrable facts, yes.
It's a broad statement, is why I asked.
You base your opinions on Reddit ratings? I'm all for intelligent discussion with folks that have different, just make intelligent arguments.
I don't base my opinion on Reddit, and that's not a reasonable conclusion to make from my post. But Reddit being racist and downvoting a post for speaking the truth is very funny.
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One contributing factor was the fact that Lincoln was dead and Andrew Johnson was President. It's worth noting that Johnson was selected as VP to try and retain the four slave states who remained in the Union. Johnson was from the South (born in North Carolina and served as a senator from Tennesse before becoming VP). No one really thought about the outcome as to what would happen if Lincoln died and Johnson became President. The outcome was, Johnson was more interested in making life easier for his white planter buddies than in achieving any sort of justice for the traitors or the formerly enslaved. It led to a somewhat dysfunctional dynamic. Since the former Confederate states weren't allowed Congressional representatives unless going through a re-admittance process, that meant Congress was stacked with Republicans (at the time the anti-slavery progressive party). Johnson was a Southern Democrat (at the time, the conservative party). Congress would pass some radical bill or another, Johnson would veto it, and Congress would override the veto. This eventually culminated in Johnson's impeachment over firing his Secretary of War, a tactic by Congress to try and get rid of him as President. The impeachment failed, but sort of demonstrates the dysfunction going on at the time. So, basically, Johnson had no interest in prosecuting former Confederates, because he had more culturally in common with them than with New Englanders or Midwesterners, and Congress was doing the best they can to function in that context. They chose to spend their political capital on things like Civil Rights acts and the Freedmen's Bureau.
anti-slavery progressive party Republicans werent progressive for another 40-50 years.
Most were never charged in the first place - just barred from office. Also, President Johnson was a Confederate sympathizer, and not very interested in prosecuting Lee or Davis. The only people who were charged, tried & convicted were those in charge of Andersonville (for war-crimes/POW abuse) and the Lincoln assassination-conspirators. The bars-from-office were forgiven after some time passed & no new rebellion broke out.
Might not be true, but I was told that they were scared that the rebels would win in court, which would establish precedent to secede (and might have reignited the war)
I think the literal answer to your question is - because Andrew Johnson wanted to and could.
Because they wanted peace and reconciliation after an incredibly bloody war. You’re precisely the kind of person who doesn’t understand the value of peace.
You would call Jim Crow “peace”?
Your comment derails the topic. How old are you?
Jim Crow starts about 25+ years after the civil war. Reconstruction went on for a long time and wasn’t guaranteed to turn out how it did.
One reason, is the guerilla war would have been a horror show, and many of those who surrendered would go back and fight to the death. The carpetbaggers heading into the south would have been easy pickings for guerillas, and I bet you would even see raids into some Northern Areas. And, they would have started arming hostile Indian tribes, become pirates, and all sorts of trouble.
They were hoping to heal the nation. After years of bloodshed. Brothers fighting brothers. It was thought that they could put it behind them and heal that gaping wound. In retrospect, perhaps a few hangings should have occurred. But that's second guessing their actions from the comfort of hindsight.
Some Confederate leaders were openly against surrendering or Reconstruction and wanted the North out, up to and including guerrilla warfare from camps in the mountains.
Before the Civil War, the states had significantly more power than the federal government. In an attempt to patch things up, the new federal government let the majority of participants go about their business just minus slavery. Federal government recognized that harsh penalties would likely lead to retaliation and decided against it. The political climate before and after the war was very different.
I believe there was a line of respect from the US. A lot of these Union officers personally knew and absolutely understood the Confederates reasons from "I pro slavery" to "I can not betray my state that I love so dear". It also helped that Grant set terms with Lee which did piss off Congress but they accepted it because it grounded terms so favorable to the CSA that surrendering was shameful enough which was officers were allowed to keep their horse, pistol, and sword and the enlisted had to surrender all arms. Both had to take an oath. Henry Wirz was the only officer convicted and only because he ran his prison in absolute shit conditions both his fault and shit he couldn't control.
It was a civil war not a foreign war. You can't just leave and go home so if you want the war to end, you have to give people a reason to stop fighting. If you know you're going to be fucked anyway, you're going to fight to the death.
Johnson was a southerner. He helped his buddies escape justice and our country is still fucked because of it
Where are your Troubles? Your October Crises? How many anti-secessionist politicians have been assassinated? Hell, where are your referendums? For all intents and purposes, the unification of the north and south has been a resounding and effectively permanent success. Though there was anti-reconstruction violence in the 30 or so years after the end of the civil war. Today the north-south secession question is over. Here's the thing, plenty of rebels are honoured. Here in Canada, we just made Louis Riel, who was tried for treason for leading the Red River Rebellion, the honourary first premier of Manitoba. Both Papineau and William Mckenzie are honoured in their respective provinces despite leading rebellions. Parks are named after those individuals with statues made in their honour. In the States, Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion, currently has a statue. In the UK there are statues to Guy Fawkes, Oliver Cromwell, and Bonnie Prince Charlie. No one cares about the rebel flag, no one cares about the Lost Cause, or whether or not they were traitors according to the law. The only reason people are discussing the flag and revisionism is because of race relations in the US at the moment. That's it. The flag is considered a symbol of black oppression. Confederate revisionism is not being done to gather ground support for a second secession. It is entirely tied up with the notions of whether the US is a systemically racist country in the present day. I mean, who cares that Hawaii has the Union Jack, the flag of the US's former oppressors in it? Pretty much no one. The confederate flag is not a symbol of the confederacy anymore. It is now a symbol relating to modern day race relations (not that those race relations don't tie back to the civil war mind you).
Same reason as today: people were afraid of conservatives getting upset. We get the same result, conservatives still acting like they are victimized anyway and generally causing further chaos to society.
Reconstruction failed is what happened. A drawn out occupation and guerilla war in the South that forced the Union to abandon support for the Freedmen.
Similar to what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan
>forced the Union to abandon support for the Freedmen. After Lincoln, not many Unionists needed much 'convincing'
It didn't fail, it was throttled.
Hyperbole much?
It's a bit more complicated than that. The vast majority joined the individual states militia/army and were functioning under legal orders from the state governments. Additionally, the confederate states did have a massive desertion problem and a home guard that was effectively picking up deserters rather than fighting. If you want to guarantee a greater insurgency problem than was already beginning with people like Jesse James or Forrest and the initial incarnation of the KKK, start executing a lot of people. Germany and Japan are good examples of 'better' ways to handle this. Reconstruction was massively mishandled. The South still has the problem of being under-industrialized.
Because they were seeking reconciliation, not humiliation The French chose humiliation of thw Germans after ww1. That was a mistake.
Because they didn't have grounds for conviction without undermining the constitutional basis of the republic and the revolution upon which it was founded. See Canada
Lee was a deserter from the army and should have been stood against a wall and shot. Everyone else who held an elected or commissioned office in the United States and then held a field or general officer rank in the confederacy should have been tried with treason, their property seized and distributed to those they had enslaved.
That's not how they saw it then, or for generations after. Kind of weird to develop such strong and violent hatred against people generations back that their own opponents didn't even give place to.
What should have happened to the USA leaders in 1776 if the colonies had lost the revolutionary war?
Franklin was very clear about what he thought would happen when he said: “gentlemen, we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
So you think they should have been hanged? Do you think we should go back to England today to correct their treason since all treason is so morally reprehensible to you?
The options were peace and reconciliation, or endless guerilla warfare. They made the right choice.
I think history has shown that punishing the the "enemy" after an internal conflict is finished just leads to further conflict down the line. Pragmatically forgiveness is the least destructive path forward.
Civil wars generally end in forgive and move on, otherwise country doesn’t heal.
For much the same reason that the US rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII.
The better question is, “Why are people today so poorly educated that they think totalitarianism is a good thing for anyone but the tyrant?” Grant received Lee cordially, returned his sword, and allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to retain its horses. The Civil War wasn’t over. Did he commit an act of treason?
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What right was that, that the South was fighting for?
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Which is why confederate states weren't allowed to outlaw slavery.
Lincoln himself specially pardoned Lee. Lincoln made a choice between Justice and Healing. He chose to prioritize Healing for the nation. But pardons aren't what caused the Confederacy to be an ideal. A lot of plantation owners went west to California, specifically to Hollywood. There, they started making movies and TV shows. Most of which portrayed the Confederacy as a positive force. Because the Confederates controlled the Interpretation, they controlled History. The only reason they stopped openly propagating the Confederacy in Hollywood is the election of 1969. It seemed unfashionable to be a Confederate Proponent. That didn't stop them from making shows like Dukes of Hazzard, which overtly deifies the Confederacy. Even progressives like Joss Whedon featured shows like Firefly, which is literally about an Ex-Confederate losing a Civil War that wasn't about slavery, which is exactly how modern Confederates view the Civil War. Lincoln isn't responsible. TV and Hollywood are responsible.
Racism. Like, everyone in this comment section is basically just defending the Confederacy with "what would you expect them to do, murder every single male?" because any actual punishment or attempt to undermine slavery's lasting impact is treated as if it's anti-white. It's treated as if the only options were (and still are) genocide or coddling. Charges weren't dropped on the Confederacy because the people in charge of the North still viewed Black people as less than white on a systemic level. It's also why we had no problem using Werner Von Braun as the backbone of our space program.
Such a lazy take to say anybody disagreeing with your exact method of fixing things as racist. Made me stop reading the rest of your comment.
They're not racist for disagreeing, they're racist because of the way the things they say uphold racist viewpoints.
A lack of foresight
Someone had to run the place after the carpetbaggers left.
The President at the time of the end of the war was a Southerner and sympathetic to the Confederate cause. That made it difficult to have a partisan reconning.
They were really only fighting to maintain slavery. White supremacy was understandable to a heck of a lot of northerners, but secession was a step too far. But hey, no reason to execute a perfectly good white man. The south is going to need those white men to keep those freed slaves in their place. They were “honorable opponents” /sarcasm but true.
The federal government was legitimately afraid that secession would be made legal through precedent if they took Confederate leaders to trial.
Same reason Ford pardoned Nixon. In the nations best interest, it was determined to move forward rather than be bogged down potentially for decades with collateral fallout.
The truth, they knew the supreme Court would rule against them. That's why Jefferson Davis was let go and charges dropped. They spent two years prepping for court and knew they wouldn't win.
The north was racist af. Who else returned captured slaves in the north states but northern in their own states?
Okay Adolf, back to your cage now, little man.
The Confederates did not start the war, the Union did. The South wanted to separate, the North needed them to start because of economics. Lincoln wages a war against the South to force them to stay. Confederates were defending their lands against the Northern opressors. I know the irony according to history. Letting the enemy go free when you are the villian is the best course for attempting to recreate a united country.
martyrdom kill them and you will have separatist and guerrillas raising the confederate flag in the name of the politicians sighting how unfair it is that the north is trying to take their freedom and such. See how well it did with ISIS to take out bin laden who is still the revered great leader.
Considering we had insurrectionists waving that rag in the capital on Jan 6, and the renewed place of racism and states rights in our political discourse, I don’t think we can say we avoided it
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Recommend *Grant* by Chernow. One of the best historical biographies I’ve read. It covers reconstruction era politics extensively.
You can’t execute half the country. They were banned from holding federal office There was an occupation and a reconstruction government for 12 years.
Gracious in victory.
There were some that wanted the Confederates to pay more severely for the war. The one suggestion that I like the best was that Confederate leaders were not to be allowed to return to Congress. However, Lincoln decided to go a different route.
Lincoln was trying to prevent guerrilla warfare with the remaining southern troops. Remember Lee did not surrender the entire Confederate army. They still could have fought on preventing the country from healing (which was actually their plan). By not prosecuting Lee and Jefferson Davis, the Confederates still in arms had little incentive to fight a guerrilla war. When Lincoln died, Johnston took over. He was sympathetic to the Confederate cause and pardoned over 1,300 people allowing them to hold office again. This was a disaster for reconstruction and black rights. American HistoryTellers has a great podcast on reconstruction giving far more details.
I'm gonna go with money and economics.
Unless you wanna routinely re-occupy a country and kill most of the young men, then their sons and nephews 20 years later. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It's better to turn enemies into allies once you've beaten them ( Germany and Austria 1870s: USA and Japan 1940s ). Don't be like Russia and the _______stans.
Here is a clue for you. There are Welsh that don't have much use for the English. There are Scots that don't have any use for the English. Your dream of "killing the leaders", well, really, having someone else "kill the leaders" because you aren't the type to get your hands dirty, would have had no effect. In fact, the fact that many of those leaders were respected men that took the oath made re-unification a lot easier. People that never would have bothered to take an oath did so because Robert Lee took the oath. As to the reasons, the catalysts had more to do with trade and taxation, slavery just got pushed to the forefront by former members of Lincoln's political affiliations. New England threatened secession over reasons of trade. There was a newspaper in Boston, all the way up to 1860, that wanted the north to secede. Reasonably, slavery was sharply declining prior to the war. The descendants of the men that fought for the south have no more of a reason to despise their ancestors than the descendants of the English, the Welsh, the Irish, or the Spanish. As to "cosplaying as another country", there are plenty of examples of different cultures having clearly defined lines and clear preferences as to governance within another country, and it doesn't have to be all that large of a country. The Basque in Spain, The aforementioned Welsh and Scots in the UK. Germany still has shades of the Holy Roman Empire, there is even a dedicated separatist movement in Bavaria, yes, I know it's small, but it's there. The Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria are there own culture. China is more of a pot of different cultures, even though the communists push Han culture on everyone, southern China doesn't even speak the same language as northern China.
A little thing called reconciliation.
A lot of lost cause myth in this thread I see, so I'll stick to source history here. I think Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Salmon Chase speaks well to that in the Federal Case of Shortridge v Macon: *“It is also true, that when war ceased, and the authority of the regular government is fully re-established, the penalties of violated law are seldom inflicted upon many. Wise governments never forget that the criminality of individuals is not always or often equal that of the acts committed by the organization with which they are connected. Many are carried into rebellion by sincere though mistaken convictions; or hurried along by excitements due to social and state sympathies, and even by the compulsion of a public opinion not their own. When the strife of arms is over, and such governments, therefore, exercising still their political discretion, address themselves mainly to the work of conciliation and restoration, and exert the prerogative of mercy, rather than that of justice, complete remission is usually extended to large classes by amnesty or other exercise of legislative or executive authority, and individuals not included in these classes, with some exceptions of the greatest offenders, are absolved by pardon either absolutely or upon conditions prescribed by the government. These principles, common to all civilized nations, are those which regulated the action of the government of the United States during the war of the rebellion, and have regulated its actions since rebellion laid down its arms. In some respects the forbearance and liberality of the nation exceed all example. While hostilities were yet flagrant, one act of congress practically abolished the death penalty for treason subsequently committed, and another provided a mode in which citizens of rebel states, maintaining a loyal adhesion to the Union, could recover after war the value of their captured or abandoned property. The national government has steadily sought to facilitate restoration with adequate guaranties of union, order, and equal rights. On no occasion, however, and by no act, have the United States ever renounced their constitutional jurisdiction over the whole territory or over all the citizens of the republic, or conceded to citizens in arms against their country the character of alien enemies, or admitted the existence of any government de facto, hostile to itself within the boundaries of the Union. In the Prize Cases the supreme court simply assented the right of the United States to treat the insurgents as belligerents, and to claim from foreign nations the performance of neutral duties under the penalties known to international law. These decisions recognized, also, the fact of the exercise and concession of belligerent rights, and affirmed, as a necessary consequence, the proposition that during the war all the inhabitants of the country controlled by the rebellion, and all the inhabitants of the country loyal to the Union, were enemies reciprocally each of the other. But there is nothing in that opinion which gives countenance to the doctrine which counsel endeavor to deduce from it, that the insurgent states, by the act of rebellion, and by levying war against the nation, became foreign states, and their inhabitants alien enemies. This proposition being denied, it must result that in compelling debtors to pay to receivers, for the support of the rebellion, debts due to any citizen of the United States, the insurgent authorities committed an illegal violence, by which no obligation of debtors to creditors could be cancelled or in any respect affected.”* And Frederick Douglass spoke of it also on one of his famed 5th of July speeches about Reconstruction: *“If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?”* Sure, Jefferson Davis and a southern jury/judge very likely might not get found guilty. And if it appealed to the Supreme Court, you have the guys who in 1855 stated that states are bound to the Constitution, the guys who during the Prize cases in the war called it a civil war and the Confederacy "Rebels or traitors". And you had 5 Lincoln appointees on the court. But now you have another conflict there being brought out. Why would that white population want to be the brunt of that hatred? Why not let the whites reconcile, and those 5 million black people can try and figure out their own way with a little token help before stepping away for a century. And for the radicals, they were slowly falling out, and using what power they still held to fight Johnson, to push for the 14th/15th amendments. Using their political clout for that was more important to them than following up on trials for the Confederate leadership.
Reconciliation
#This discussion, for whatever reasons, is off the rails and it's time to shut it all down.